ASP web hosting

ASP or IIS hosting is the usual choice if you are looking for easy integration of your web site with your Access or SQL databases, and to use your ASP scripts. Web owners and web developers also like the easy way ASP can be used to add features like blogs, forums, auctions and file management to their sites.

Windows web hosting is available from a huge number of hosting services, usually with ASP enabled, so if you are looking for this kind of hosting, what factors should you take into account? We assume you want to use ASP to create dynamic web pages.

One of the most obvious things to check is that the hosting service offers Ajax, a free framework which will allow you or your developers to create interfaces, easily access remote services, and use Visual Studio 2008. (See http://asp.net/ajax for more information.)

Another thing to check when looking at ASP web hosting would include the components which come with the hosting package - how important these are to you will depend on what you want to do with the hosting and your web site.

In addition, you will have the usual choice between free and paid hosting services. Yes, free ASP-enabled web hosting does exist. These plans are usually restricted in terms of space and bandwidth, so that you have to upgrade to a paid service when your site becomes successful, but may be worth considering if you just want to play around with ASP hosting before launching a serious commercial site at a later date.